Just arrived back from my holiday and have seen all this! Maybe I shouldn't really post as I'm not a Jug regular (long way from Belgium!) and I've only been to the wonderful Jug once (for this year's Yorkshire Gathering which I enjoyed enormously).

From the outside, it appears to me that the Jug has a really excellent and vibrant music session going and has done for many years now. I hope very much to be able to visit again in the not too distant future (we might be able to pass through in mid-November as I am driving up to Edinburgh from Hull for a wedding on the following Friday. Sessions like the Jug's are rare (at least for me now as an expat from Ireland and the UK) and it is a pity to read some of the things that have been posted in this thread.

I helped start off a session in London in 1976 which I was subsequently a regular at for 15 years and which, despite my absence for 10 years now, is still going strong. I saw many comings and goings in that time and also most of the the problems ever described here at Mudcat in threads about sessions. Nevertheless, goodwill and acceptance of the odd spat and foible always saw us through these difficulties. I even turned up there a few weeks ago for the first time in 10 years. One of the musicians looked up and said "Hello Richard! Haven't seen you for a few weeks...!" and we resumed the conversation we'd been halfway through 10 years earlier! I even remembered to bring the little store of real tortoiseshell picks I'd promised another of the musicians before I'd left for Belgium. Which was just as well as he was down to the butt-end of his last one!

I hope that goodwill and acceptance will also keep the Jug on it's wonderful track. And please don't make it so strict that I won't be able to give Noreen and Patrish, and Eric, Skipjack and Bill (sorry lads...ladies first!) a great big hug each if I do turn up, and shake hands with other new friends before we get stuck into some great music.

All the best

mooman (TAFKA mcmoo)